


this is how it goes

by diana_hawthorne (dhawthorne)



Category: Homeland
Genre: F/M, post-ep
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-05
Updated: 2019-03-05
Packaged: 2019-11-12 12:45:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 388
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18011135
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dhawthorne/pseuds/diana_hawthorne
Summary: Pakistan was supposed to be her chance to redeem herself.Post-ep for S04E05 "About a Boy."





	this is how it goes

**Author's Note:**

> I _love_ Martha Boyd and wish they'd bring her back!! There isn't enough Martha fic out there, so I wrote some more.

Twenty years ago Dennis was… dashing. Dazzling. A bright light. She’d said that to Redmond tonight, when he’d dragged her loser husband’s drunk body into the Residence. It was true. By the time they met, at that point in her career, she and Saul were done and they’d nearly blown themselves up (figuratively, mostly, though there was that time he’d pulled over and they’d fucked in the backseat with the live rounds in the back of their transport and got rearended and…) with their engagement and their breakup and when she went back to Washington, and met this then-assistant professor at a cocktail party, she’d thought, _he could sweep me off my feet_. And then two years later they were married and she was pregnant and despite what he _claims_ , they spent _years_ putting his career first.

And then he plagiarized a chapter of his book and got caught and then she was _glad_ it was her fucking turn to put her career first, because that was the only goddamn way they were going to climb out of the morass that was their lives. Washington’s a small town for all it plays at being cosmopolitan and he was blackballed and the only social events they got invited to were out of pity, because why the hell would people invite them to things when they were the topic of conversation? So they got invited to work events only and then she got invited to events with fucking Embassy _wives_ and she started accepting tours overseas again and all she could think was, _we have to get Toby out of this_ and _I should've married Saul_ , because at least an explosion was better than sinking in quicksand, shackled to a dead weight. But then she wouldn't have Toby, and she still _loved_ Dennis, she’d reminded herself. She’d deluded herself. 

Pakistan was supposed to be her chance to redeem herself, to make something out of her career and get them back home, but how the hell will she ever be able to face anyone in Washington ever again when it's all over the Embassy that the Ambassador's husband gets so shitfaced at the Chatsworth she needs to get Agency personnel to drag him back?

She climbs into bed alone, and _Christ_ , she thinks, _what I wouldn't give to be a widow._


End file.
